Supporting autonomy for people with aphasia: use of the Life Interests and Values (LIV) Cards.

Background: People with aphasia (PWA) are frequently disregarded as reliable respondents because their language problems may restrict their responses to oral and written questioning. Consequently, family members are often asked to speak on their behalf. The Life Interests and Values (LIV) Cards are a nonlinguistic, picture-based instrument designed for communicating directly with PWA about their current and desired life activities.

Perseveration in the connected speech of boys with Fragile X syndrome with and without autism spectrum disorder.

Verbal perseveration is a frequently reported language characteristic of males with Fragile X syndrome and may be a defining feature or hallmark of the syndrome. We compared the verbal perseveration of boys with Fragile X syndrome with (n  =  29) and without (n  =  30) autism spectrum disorder, boys with Down syndrome (n  =  27), and typically developing boys (n  =  25) at similar nonverbal mental ages. During a social interaction, boys with both Fragile X syndrome and autism spectrum disorder produced significantly more topic perseveration than all other groups.

C-Speak Aphasia alternative communication program for people with severe aphasia: importance of executive functioning and semantic knowledge.

Learning how to use a computer-based communication system can be challenging for people with severe aphasia even if the system is not word-based. This study explored cognitive and linguistic factors relative to how they affected individual patients' ability to communicate expressively using C-Speak Aphasia (CSA), an alternative communication computer program that is primarily picture-based. Ten individuals with severe non-fluent aphasia received at least six months of training with CSA.

Stuttering Following Acquired Brain Damage: A Review of the Literature.

Communication problems resulting from acquired brain damage are most frequently manifested as motor speech disorders such as dysarthria, syndromes of aphasia, and impairments of pragmatics. A much less common phenomenon is the onset of stuttering in adults who sustain a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or other neurologic events. When stuttering occurs in association with neuropathology, precise characterization and explanation of observed behaviors is often difficult.

Improved naming after TMS treatments in a chronic, global aphasia patient--case report.

We report improved ability to name pictures at 2 and 8 months after repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatments to the pars triangularis portion of right Broca's homologue in a 57 year-old woman with severe nonfluent/global aphasia (6.5 years post left basal ganglia bleed, subcortical lesion). TMS was applied at 1 Hz, 20 minutes a day, 10 days, over a two-week period.

Verbal perseveration in individuals with Alzheimer's disease.

Perseveration has been described as a reliable indicator of disturbed brain function and is a common characteristic of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). This article will begin with a review of recent theories that account for the phenomenon of perseveration, and data from a National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)--supported study further delineate the nature of perseveration among individuals with AD. The study investigated the frequency of verbal perseveration in individuals with AD in relation to task type, mental status, and performance on attention and memory tests.

Cognition and aphasia: a discussion and a study.

Unlabelled: The relation between other aspects of cognition and language status of individuals with aphasia is not well-established, although there is some evidence that integrity of non-linguistic skills of attention, memory, executive function and visuospatial skills can not be predicted on the basis of aphasia severity. At the same time, there is a growing realization among rehabilitation specialists, based on clinical experience and preliminary studies, that all domains of cognition are important to aphasia therapy outcomes. This paper describes a new study of the relation between linguistic and nonlinguistic skill in a group of individuals with aphasia.